OMNeT++

IDE Developers Guide

Version 5.1.1
Copyright 2016 Andrs Varga and OpenSim Ltd.
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1
2. Installing the Plug-in Development Environment ................................................. 2
3. Creating The First Plug-in ................................................................................... 4
Creating the Plug-in ......................................................................................... 4
The project ...................................................................................................... 4
Testing the Plug-in ........................................................................................... 5
Exporting the plug-in ....................................................................................... 5
Deploying the plug-in in a project ................................................................... 6
4. Eclipse Plug-in Development ............................................................................... 8
5. OMNeT++ IDE Developer Guide ........................................................................ 9
Overview .......................................................................................................... 9
Accessing NED and Message Types ................................................................. 9
Accessing Projects ......................................................................................... 10
Extension Points ............................................................................................ 10
Wizards .................................................................................................. 10

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Chapter1.Introduction
The OMNeT++ IDE is based on the Eclipse platform which is an extensible, Java based
framework. While it started as an IDE framework only, its main goal is to be a gener-
ic integration platform. Extensions (called plug-ins) can be written in Java language.
Plug-ins can be simply added to an existing Eclipse installation, extending it with new
functionality by contributing various user interface elements into the platform user
interface.

The OMNeT++ IDE is in fact an Eclipse installation with some additional - simulation
related - tools pre-installed:

The OMNeT++ feature which contains all OMNeT++ specific tools you use: the
NED, MSG and INI file editor, simulation launcher, result analysis tools, sequence
char view, documentation generator etc.

CDT (C/C++ Development Tooling - eclipse.org/cdt) - for C++ development and de-
bugging. This feature integrates with the standard gcc toolchain and the gdb debug-
ger.

Version control integration plug-ins for Git and Subversion.

To keep the size of OMNeT++ distribution small, the OMNeT++ IDE does not contain
the tools required for Java development. If you would like to develop your own plug-
ins for the IDE, you will need to install some additional components manually:

JDT (Java Development Tools) - for generic Java development. JDT contains a Java
compiler and all the editors debuggers and tools used during Java development.

PDE (Plug-in Development Environment) - this component contains additional tools,

API definitions and documentation for developing plug-ins. PDE requires the pres-
ence of JDT.

We recommend first learning the basics of Eclipse plug-in development. The best place
to start is the Platform Plug-in Developer Guide which can be accessed from the Help
menu after you have installed the PDE. Of course, you will need some Java program-
ming experience as well.

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Chapter2.Installing the Plug-in
Development Environment
To develop plug-ins for the IDE, you need to install the Eclipse Plug-in Development
Environment (PDE) into the IDE. This section describes how to install PDE.

Start the IDE, and select Help -> Install New Software from the menu. This will
bring up the Install dialog.

At the top of the dialog you can choose an Eclipse software repository to install software
from. Select Indigo from the list.

If Indigo is not present, add it: Click the Add button, then fill in the dialog that comes
up:

Name: Indigo

Location: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo

Then click OK.

After a while, the Install dialog should show the list of available Eclipse packages.
Select Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment from the General Purpose Tools
group, then go thought the rest of the wizard to get PDE installed. This will install
PDEs prerequisites, most notably JDT (Java Development Tooling) as well.

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 Installing the Plug-in Development Environment

When the download and the installation finished, restart the IDE.

Now the IDE is ready for plug-in development.

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Chapter3.Creating The First Plug-
in
Creating the Plug-in
Once PDE is installed, we can create a small example Hello World plug-in. This plug-
in will place a menu item on the main menubar. Invoking the menu item will launch
a simple dialog.

Choose File | New | Project from the menu. The New Project wizard dialog comes
up, with project type selection on the first page. Choose Plug-in Project from the Plug-
in Development group and click Next.

On the next page, enter org.example.hello for project name, then click Next. On
the following page (Content), you can just click Next as well. The following page allows
you to choose the initial content for your project from among several code examples.
Choose Hello, World, then click Finish.

A new project named org.example.hello will be created.

The IDE will also ask you if you want to switch to the Plug-in Development perspective;
answer Yes.

The project
Open the project and explore the generated files. There are two important files that
are often used during plug-in development: plugin.xml and MANIFEST.MF. They both
contain metadata that describe how your plug-in should be used by the platform.

MANIFEST.MF contains basic information about your plug-in. External dependencies,

name, version number etc. The plugin.xml file describes what your plug-in con-
tributes to the platform. You should always specify your contributions otherwise they
will not appear on the user interface.

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 Creating The First Plug-in

Double-click on one of the above files. This will start a form editor with several pages.
Explore the possibilities. Later you can add other plug-ins here you are depending on,
or you can specify what Java packages you plan to provide to other plug-ins. On he first
page, there are useful shortcuts to export your plug-in in a deployable format (JAR file).

Of course you can have other files inside the plug-ins. You will need .class files (con-
taining your code of course) or image resources for icons.

Testing the Plug-in

On the Overview tab click the Launch an Eclipse application link

A new instance of Eclipse will be started containing the generated plug-in. If everything
is OK you should see a Sample Menu containing a Sample Action. When clicked, it
will bring up a message dialog.

Exporting the plug-in

Use the Export plug-in link on the Overview page of the manifest editor.

Choose Directory radio button for Destination, specify directory name, and click [Fin-
ish]

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 Creating The First Plug-in

The plug-in will be generated as <dirname>/plugins/aaaa_1.0.0.201001061910.jar

Deploying the plug-in in a project

Once you have a final, exported plug-in in a deployable format you have to copy it into
your Eclipse installation (<omnetpp>/ide/dropins). You should restart the IDE so it
can recognize it.

The OMNeT++ IDE can load plug-ins from the workspace (projects) as well. This can
be useful if you have implemented an extension that is useful only for certain type of
project. (e.g. a plug-in helping to assign IP addresses to hosts should be active only if
the INET project is open).

Open an existing OMNeT++ project (e.g. aloha). Create a folder named plugins.

Copy the exported plug-in file (jar) into the plugins folder.

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 Creating The First Plug-in

It should be activated automatically. If you delete it, or close the project it should dis-
appear. If you replace it with a new version, it will be updated.

Not all plug-ins behave nicely; (they have to support correctly the activation and de-
activation themselves). If you experience problems, it might be a good idea to restart
the IDE.

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Chapter4.Eclipse Plug-in
Development
It is out of scope of this manual to teach the reader on how to write Eclipse plug-ins.
There are excellent books and on-line resources on this topic; well list some of them
below.

The most straightforward resources are the Eclipse manuals themselves. Open the
Eclipse help system (Help -> Help Contents). If PDE is installed, you will find the
following manuals in it:

Platform Plug-in Developer Guide

Plug-in Development Environment Guide

Searching for developing Eclipse plug-ins on the web will reveal many good tutorials,
overviews and other articles.

A more in-depth coverage of the topic is the book Eclipse Plug-ins, by Eric Clayberg
and Dan Rubel. Former editions were titled Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality
Plug-ins, which might be familiar to more people. The book has an associated web
site: http://www.qualityeclipse.com.

Another book that we found useful is The Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs by John
Arthorne and Chris Laffra. The book is now available online: http://wiki.eclipse.org/in-
dex.php/The_Official_Eclipse_FAQs.

One can find several more good books on amazon.com about Eclipses architecture,
services, developing plug-ins.

The rest of this Manual assumes that you are familiar with Eclipse concepts and Eclipse
plug-in development in general.

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Chapter5.OMNeT++ IDE
Developer Guide
Overview
Developing a plug-in for the OMNeT++ IDE is exactly the same how you would develop
a normal Eclipse plug-in. In addition to Eclipse API, you can access the API provided by
the OMNeT++ specific plug-ins. These plug-ins allow you to browse, access and even
modify the data structures representing the NED and MSG files. To access OMNeT++
specific APIs, you first have to add the appropriate OMNeT++ plug-in as a dependency
to your plug-in.

Double click on the plugin.xml file in your plug-in project and open the dependen-
cies page. Add the org.omnetpp.ned.model and the org.omnetpp.ned.core plug-
in as a dependency. (Also add org.eclipse.core.resources. We will need it for our
example later.)

Accessing NED and Message Types

We will modify our earlier Hello world example to print out the number of NED types in
all open projects. Note that this is not the same as the number of NED files. Some NED
files may contain more than one type while others contain none at all (e.g. package.ned).
We can access the internal NED model via the NEDResources class.

Open the SampleAction.java file and modify its content:

public void run(IAction action) {

MessageDialog.openInformation(
window.getShell(), "NED Info",
"Number of NED types: "+NEDResources.getInstance().
getNedTypesFromAllProjects().size());
}

The parsed model of all NED files can be accessed via the NEDResources.getIn-
stance() singleton object. The NEDResources class is the main entry point to access
and manipulate the content of NED files. If you know the fully qualified name of a type,
you can obtain its type descriptor (INedTypeInfo) using the getToplevelNedType()
method. There are numerous other ways to access and query the NED types. Check
the documentation of the NEDResources and INedTypeInfo class.

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 OMNeT++ IDE Developer Guide

Similarly, you can access information about message files using the MsgRe-
sources.getInstance() method. Check the documentation of the IMsgTypeRe-
solver and IMsgTypeInfo interfaces for further information.

You have to add the org.omnetpp.ned.core and org.omnetpp.ned.model plug-ins

to the project dependencies to access their classes.

Accessing Projects
If you want to work with projects or files in your plug-in, there are several useful classes
that can help you. The ProjectUtils class from the org.omnetpp.common plug-in
can be used to enumerate open or referenced projects, or NED folders. You can add
OMNeT++ support to existing projects.

If you add org.omnetpp.common to your project dependencies, you can use CDTU-
tils to enumerate C++ source or excluded folders. MakefileToools and 'MetaMake-
make` from org.omnetpp.cdt are used to control the Makefile generation.

The source of the OMNeT++ plug-ins are bundled with the IDE. You can easily access
their documentation.

Extension Points
The OMNeT++ plug-ins define some extension points that can be used to change or
extend the current functionality of the IDE.

From org.omnetpp.common:

org.omnetpp.common.wizard.contenttemplates : You can add additional con-

tent templates to the New File wizards. You must specify the location of the template
files in your project (by default it is templates).

org.omnetpp.common.wizard.templatecontributors : You can add template

variables to all of your templates. The plug-in must implement the org.omnetp-
p.common.wizard.IContentTemplateContributor interface to contribute to the
template variables.

Wizards
New wizards can be added to IDE by implementing them directly in Java. For compli-
cated wizards, this is the recommended strategy. If your wizard just gathers some data
from the user and then generates some file as the result, we recommend creating tem-
plate-based wizards instead, as they do not require Java language knowledge. For fur-
ther info about how to write custom wizards please read the IDE Customization Guide.

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